You know what? The Wii was an awesome console

[EzraPound]

So I'm drinking a bit of wine, after playing through a bit of Red Steel 2--which I never got around too--as a postlude to my daily X-COM session. It's pretty cool--not a 'major' FPS in the vein of Far Cry 3 or [/i]Human Revolution[/i], but a fun hybrid of No More Heroes and an FPS nevertheless--the swordplay is like what John Romero was trying to achieve with Daikatana, but couldn't because of the limitations of a keyboard and mouse setup. And I got thinking, because I haven't used my Wii for a while (a lot of my games are on loan to a friend): damn, the Wii was a (critically) underrated console. I say this for a few reasons:

1) The games--an obvious place to start. Nintendo undeniably contributed a boatload of great games to the Wii--I'll spare you hashing it out--but what's often forgotten is how great a lot of third-party titles were: No More Heroes, Muramasa, the best version of Resident Evil 4, Red Steel 2, MadWorld, Xenoblade Chronicles, Little King's Story, Dead Space: Extraction, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Zack & Wiki, Dawn of Discovery, Boom Blox, the GoldenEye remake, Trauma Center, etc etc.

Say what you will about these games, but it's worth remarking that 1) unlike its competitors, most good Wii games weren't readily available on multiple other consoles, and 2) most people who dissed the Wii for having a shallow library probably didn't own ten per cent of the good games on it.

2) Local multi-player--whatever happened to it? Admittedly, as the lifespan of the PS3 and Xbox 360 progressed, more of the games on them started to feature local multi-player support, but I was still dismayed, for example, to discover after buying Far Cry 3 that there was no co-op or even deathmatch. By contrast, when you use the Wii it's like your transported to the heyday of local multi-player--most of the good games for, barring a few decidedly single-player focused Nintendo entries, features local multi-player--you know, because sometimes it's better to play with your friends while chatting in a living room rather than being screeched at by eleven year-olds over a headset.

3) The controls--while I realize Nintendo's decision to utilize motion controls for the Wii was often decried by gamers as a "gimmick", bear with me for a second. I actually liked them. Allow me to elaborate three reasons for this:

a) The best thing about the Wii's 'motion controls' wasn't the largely redundant waggling of the Wiimote: it was actually the usage of the remote as a pointer, which--for the first time, I think, in game history--provided gamers with a pack-in controller that was as sensitive as a mouse. Aside from lending itself to breezy navigation of the console interface, this was a huge help with certain kinds of games: whenever I play shooters on the Wii I'm popping off head shots nonstop, and strategy and simulation games were way more manageable than they would've been with a joystick.

b) An often ignored benefit of the Wii's motion controls--which force you to move around a bit while you're playing--is that they tend to help abate the effects of motion sickness, which stems physiologically from a disparity between the stillness of one's body and the appearance of motion onscreen. As many as 10 to 50% of people are thought to suffer from motion sickness while gaming--and for me, this was a huge boon.

c) "The medium is the message", said Marshall McLuhan. Accordingly, the economy of the button design on the Wii--which encouraged designers to stick to utilizing 3-4 buttons in the main--was, in my opinion, a great move: it prevented games from getting bogged down with the unnecessary complexity that often puts off new (or even experienced) gamers. Nintendo does control better than anyone, and that was evident on the Wii: games like Super Mario Galaxy provided satisfying familiar control set-ups for old school gamers.


4) A lot of great Virtual Console and WiiWare games--I won't belabour readers with a list (this information is readily available on Wikipedia), but when you combine the games on WiiWare with those in the VC library the Wii handily eclipses PSN/XBLA in terms of downloadable content and retro titles. Plus, if you're a terrible anarchist who hates democracy, you could hack the console and get them all free.

5) The price--with the Wii, the price was right: it launched at a lower price point than most consoles in recent memory, and seemed to benefit during the 2007-2009 period, when the recession was in full swing, from an unwillingness on part of middle-class gamers to shell out the dough necessary for the PS3/X360. This worked well, for me: as student who wasn't working from '07-09 I didn't have much money, and the Wii consistently provided excellent gaming experiences for a couple of years before I bought a PS3, which admittedly has a larger library.

--

So what do you guys think? Does the Wii deserve its sordid reputation amongst 'hardcore' gamers? Or in spite of the protestations of it being a fad was it secretly a great console?

 

[Joffas16]

I loved the Wii too, it was a cool console. The only real problem was that to find the, maybe, fifty at the most, great games on the system you had to wade through an ocean of shovelware.

 

[TehCookie]

I like the Wii, but it never did feel like a hardcore console to me. The controls were to gimmicky to sit down and enjoy. I had a blast with the casual waggling games, especially the multiplayer ones with friends, but when playing a single player game for long periods of time they weren't as good as a plain controller. I still think the library was tiny, you could say it was quality over quantity, but it still didn't leave as much variety as the PS3. The main reason I picked it up was because it was backwards compatible so I could play gamecube games as well.

It does get way to much hate for silly things like graphics or because it has casual games. Besides what's more hardcore than playing Just Dance and enjoying it?

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Xenoblade Chronicles is actually a second-party, if not first-party title, as Monolift Soft are wholly owned by Nintendo and this was the case by the time Xenoblade was released. It's worth noting that they actually co-developed Skyward Sword, New Leaf, Pikmin 3 and Brawl.

Still, to the point, I love an awful lot of Wii games so I'm inclined to agree.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Wasn't the Wii the most successful of all the 7th generation consoles? It's hardly underrated, just wasn't given much attention in the hardcore scene since it appealed primarily to casual gamers.

Which isn't bad, I mean it made Nintendo a shitload of money.

 

[josemlopes]

Meh, it had cool content for people that enjoyed that kind of content, but other then that it didnt offer much more.

Its not that it makes it a bad console but it certainly wasnt for everyone (not for me for example). And there is no denying that the latter years werent all that great.

Out of all the Wii games there are probably less then 10 that I would (and still do) actually want to play while in the 360/PS3 there were a lot more then that. For that alone the system isnt all that worth it but I can totally see that for someone else with different tastes there are probably less the 10 games that they are interested on the 360/PS3 and a lot more on the Wii.

Its like the Wii U now, if you really like Nintendo games then the system will be fine for you. If you dont then you are stuck with a paper weight

 

[Smooth Operator]

For it's price the offering was pretty good, the prices of games however were not, you were still paying near triple A prices for what were essentially decades old games.

 

[gorfias]

I realized I hated it for most things when I was playing my favorite single person game on it (Madworld) and realized I really hated the controls.

It became a party system for me. I brought it to a couple of company parties and it was fun for that, but sitting at home: mostly the PS3.

For those that liked the controls, as long as you got past the shovelware, it did have a lot.

 

[Nazulu]

I hated it. I wish I had a great time with it like you people did but it just drove me bat shit insane sometimes because how frequent the problems were.

First of all, the controls didn't immerse me any more and weren't as easy to grasp as the GameCube controller, plus I wasn't a fan to pointing at the screen. It also didn't help that I believed in Nintendo so much that when I heard the GC controller would be usable on it, that I automatically thought it would be an option for everything, now that was disappointing. Then there was the constant disconnection issues and how some batteries ran out of juice so quickly. Then I bought a recharger and it didn't work, so I bought another with 2 ports and one side was broken, oh the joy. This shit happened constantly, and because of that I get nervous every time I use any motion type controller.

The Wii Ware games are the reason I kept my Wii, mainly because I liked being able to play them with my GC controllers. It was a pretty good little store, so I agree with you there, though I don't think that store will be there forever. I didn't have too many connection problems either, though sometimes I couldn't avoid this unbearable lag. That's all I have to say I about that.

The games weren't anything amazing, there wasn't one game that would make me want to keep the console, including the ones I did buy it for rubbed me the wrong way and it made me lose my faith in Nintendo. Also, those who didn't own a lot of them like me, were probably smart enough to just hire them to see what they're like, like I've been doing with every console from the beginning.

So, in conclusion, I believe it was one big mistake because they didn't have more options (mainly for the GameCube controller) and a lot of the hardware didn't work liked I hoped it would.

 

[piinyouri]

I loved the idea of the Wii. I thought it had a lot potential, I just never felt it was fully realized.

But as history has gone down for the thing now?
I refrain personally from calling it an awesome console.

Some games that gave me hope were Metroid Corruption and Resident Evil 4.

I was LEARY of trying out Corruption given that I knew it would be using the Wiimote but after a short time orientating and accustoming myself to it, it became second nature. Excellent use of the motion controls.

I've never been a fan of RE4 because of the floaty aiming. When I tried it out on the Wii hoping it just might better actually being able to aim my weapon, I was rewarded, and that's exactly what I got.
Incidentally, the game becomes much much easier when they allow you to aim properly.

 

[Yuno Gasai]

I loved the Wii, too.

My uncle still has one, and I find it's invaluable for family bonding time at Christmas (even despite the wide variety of ages in my family). The simple controls make it accessible to everyone, and seeing as most of the games my uncle owns are "party" oriented, their rules are so easy to understand that everyone is able to just pick up and play them.

When I still had my Wii, I never really felt the drive to play it alone. It felt like much more of a family/party console, and the games on their own weren't really enough to hold my attention when I was playing them by myself. I lost interest pretty quickly.

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

I liked the idea of the Wii, but it was so bad it actually ended my fanboyism for Nintendo.

Waiting for years only to have very few actually good or interesting games to come out with subpar graphics finally took its toll and drove me to buy a 360. From then on I never really looked back. :/

 

[likalaruku]

I see it more as exercise equipment with mild entertainment value. I'm planning to get one once we finally clean out the spare room & set up the exercise equipment. I'll have no excuse not to exercise ever again.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Awesome I would disagree it was adequate at best I found it reliable and quite nice looking and compact so plus points there. The games however were not great I am glad I got a Wii purely for such amazing titles as Xenoblade Chronicles Mario Galaxy and the Last Story which are some of my favourites of all the titles from last/this gen.

Apart from a few games though it was largely a disappointment. I was also amazed at how little the Little Kings story actually used motion controls even though I thought that was one game that could have actually benefited quite a lot from it, atrocious pathfinding killed that game for me though which was a shame as it had so much charm but spending a minute or more trying to get all your group up one ledge is not fun especially with the regularity it occurs.

 

[hazabaza1]

Meh.
It had some good games and decent ideas like any console does but really it was mostly unimpressive. The fun or impressive games are generally said so with the note "for a Wii game". The exclusives were fun but not fun enough to warrant full price.

 

[Kyrian007]

Of the 7th gen consoles the Wii got the most use from me. As a primarily a PC gamer, the Wii had the exclusives and everything else I got on PC. My PS 3 and XBOX 360 saw some use in multiplayer early, but I had a laser go out on the PS3 and of course a couple of RRoD on the XBOX made me give up on both systems as unreliable trash. I gave up on XBOX entirely, my PS3 got repaired and now collects dust except for the occasional game of Madden with buddies. The Wii however works just as well now as it did out of the box. Never had control problems, I'm still using the same charger + rechargeable batteries I bought way back just after the release date and still get 5+ hours per charge out of them.

Nintendo makes a product to last, Sony and Microsoft crank out flashy junk that seems to be designed to break just after the warranty runs out.

 

[mitchell271]

I think we all collectively agreed that the Wii had a pretty good life a couple years ago. I mean, even if we completely ignore all the great first party games, it still had some fantastic standouts. No More Heroes, as you mentioned Red Steel 2, Zack & Wiki, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc. And the first party games were as amazing as ever. Sure, it has a rocky start and was a little gimmicky, but that seems to be part for the course when it comes to Nintendo consoles lately.

 

[Vivi22]

Wasn't the Wii the most successful of all the 7th generation consoles? It's hardly underrated, just wasn't given much attention in the hardcore scene since it appealed primarily to casual gamers.

Which isn't bad, I mean it made Nintendo a shitload of money.

The thing's they did to make all of that money are costing them now though.

Honestly, I hate the Wii. Motion controls were awful. Even Nintendo couldn't figure out good ways to use them and they were less intuitive, easy and efficient to use than buttons. Honestly, if the system accomplished anything though, it was demonstrating that motion controls are a dead end, casual gamers are fickle people who don't buy games and will readily jump from one trendy device to another, and that Nintendo has basically run out of ideas for console innovation. Well, I guess the Wii U was really the console that drove that stuff home, but the Wii was certainly the first inkling of it.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I agree with the statement by the OP. The wii was a cool console, and if it wasn't for it, I wouldn't have gotten into the most obscure games on the market (Trauma Center/Trauma Team, The Last Story.) Plus I can still play gamecube games on it..

Though I do agree with the people here as well. Alot of those games were impossible to find unless you went on amazon, and alot of them never came here in the US.

 

[joest01]

Some of my best memories this gen are on the Wii. Specifically Metroid Prime Corruption was beautiful. Also Xenoblade (though I still havent finished it). And RE4. I actually bought Re4HD on the PS3 but I cant get into it after having played RE4 on the Wii. I think a lot of folks who complain about RE controls havent played the Wii version.

As sort of a guilty pleasure, I dont think I have laughed more during a game than during Far Cry on the Wii!

And yea, the party games. I guess that was the "casual" aspect. But the Wii brought people together in my living room. My Ps3 tends to separate me from others.